They stand, those walls of Zion,
All jubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel,
And all the martyr throng.
With jasper glow thy bulwarks,
Thy streets with emeralds blaze,
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays.
Thine ageless walls are bonded
With amethyst unpriced;
The saints build up its fabric,
The corner-stone is Christ.
[Footnote: We cannot resist the temptation to give a few lines of the original hymn of Bernard of Clugny, a Breton monk of English parentage of the 12th century—"the sweetest of all the hymns of heavenly homesickness of the soul," and for generations one of the most familiar, through translations, in many languages. The rhyme and rhythm are so difficult, that the author was able to master it, he believed, only by special inspiration of God.
Urbs Syon aurea, patria lactea, cive decora,
Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora,
Nescio, nescio, quae jubilatio, lux tibi qualis,
Quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.]
For a moment longer he gazed upon the broad, flowing river which divided two neighbouring peoples, one in language, in blood, in heroic early traditions, and the common heirs of the grandest literature the world has ever seen, yet severed by a deep, wide, angry-flowing stream of strife, which, dammed up for a time, was about to burst forth in a desolating flood that should overwhelm and destroy some of the fairest fruits of civilization in both countries. As he gazed northward, he beheld, on the eastern bank of the river, the snowy walls and grass-grown ramparts of Fort Niagara, above which floated proudly the stars and stripes.
As he gazed on the ancient fort, the memories of its strange eventful history came thronging on his mind from the time that La Salle thawed the frozen ground in midwinter to plant his palisades, to the time that the gallant Prideaux lay mangled in its trenches by the bursting of a cohorn—on the very eve of victory. These memories have been well expressed in graphic verse by a living Canadian poet—a denizen of the old borough of Niagara. [Footnote: William Kirby, Esq., in CANADIAN METHODIST MAGAZINE for May, 1878.]
Two grassy points—not promontories—front
The calm blue lake—the river flows between,
Bearing in its full bosom every drop
Of the wild flood that leaped the cataract.
And swept the rock-walled gorge from end to end.
'Mid flanking eddies, ripples, and returns,
It rushes past the ancient fort that once
Like islet in a lonely ocean stood,
A mark for half a world of savage woods;
With war and siege and deeds of daring wrought
Into its rugged walls—a history
Of heroes, half forgotten, writ in dust.
Two centuries deep lie the foundation stones,
La Salle placed there, on his adventurous quest
Of the wild regions of the boundless west;
Where still the sun sets on his unknown grave.
Three generations passed of war and peace;
The Bourbon lilies grew; brave men stood guard;
And braver still went forth to preach and teach
Th' evangel, in the forest wilderness,
To men fierce as the wolves whose spoils they wore.